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The problem with the net is that everything is ephemeral, and people make the mistake of judging things based on that ephemeral nature. It seems fairly obvious this "Buzzfeed" place hasn't read much, if any, of GoV beyond the post they linked to.

Funny thing, the verification text for this post is "vienkoyg". Proving that you can find anything in just about anything else, the japanese words "ko ei ge" (ko y g) can be assembled as "great victory deed", leaving "Vienna Great Victory Deed" or some such. Of course it can also mean "Old rayfish deception"... :)

They obviously don't pay attention and read your blog the way they should. Either that or it is just over their heads - probably not hard to do... Your blog is one of the best reads in the blogosphere and no one, and I mean no one - has been more dedicated to seeing justice done in Iraq. There was no pity to speak of here for Saddam and his partaking of the eternal dirt nap...

In the same spirit of equivalence and moral duty, how about we launch one precision guided ground to ground missile from Basrah, to say... a munitions dump, IED factory, aircraft hangar, warship and so on, in Iran, each time an Iranian proxy in Gaza or Lebanon fires an indiscriminately aimed Quassam or other rocket at Israel? For that matter, why not every time an IED explodes in Iraqu, and make it our stated policy that this will continue until either Iran stops abeting terror or we run out of targets in Iran? Seems to me only fair and equal treatment.

If they took any of my comment and interpreted it to mean there was sympathy for Saddam being killed here at GoV, they were way off base.

I was merely relating the facts on the ground out here. How this event was interpreted in Iraq by Iraqi's is VASTLY different than how it was interpreted in the US.

My personal anger with the situation is because of how it was turned into a politicized gift for one small segment of the country (*sadr supporters) at the extreme expense to the rest of Iraq. That certainly doesn't degenerate my personal happiness that Saddam is no more. Why why why can people not see shades of gray, nuance, or anything in this world other than black and white.

The ramifications of this event are going to be far reaching and probably very bad for Iraq as a country. The entire process used in this hanging, chanting the name sadr, dropping him before he could finish his prayer, torturing him verbally before the hanging (and shunning the one person who asked for everyone to act professional) are all major indicators that the ruling govt. is not only tolerating the shia insurgency, but actively promoting the divide it is causing inside the country.

We worked so hard to create the idea of a democratic process out here, to teach people what it meant to vote. Now, all they see is sadr as the new saddam, and all the talk and promises of democracy as merely a different way for oppressive govts. to take power.

There was definetely a strong opinion in at least the portion of the blogosphere I gaze at, that said the execution was mishandled. That's not even close to the same thing as being sympathetic to Saddam.